Daily Word

The deepest anguish in a human heart is the anguish of the unfulfilled and the unrealized: not to be the self I am eternally designed and destined to be – the existential anguish.

The horribly anguished result of sin is an incomplete man, a shrunken being, desperately struggling to be something/someone, struggling to realize himself: like "a bruised reed and a smoldering wick" - with an inexplicable feeling deep down that he is not who he should be.

"A bruised reed" gives an image of a person with a broken spine, without the ability to face life's challenges; "a smoldering wick" is someone who cannot endure life because the flame of life itself is weak and languishing.

Belonging and security, sufficiency and joy of life are the basic needs of human life.

Psalm 22:9-10 gives a beautiful picture of this: "You brought me out of the womb; You made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on You; from my mother’s womb You have been my God.”

The feeling of belonging is created at the mother's breast, the security in the father's arms, and together a certainty of sufficiency and joy in life is formed. This creates a firm identity which means that you are carried by a safe inner assurance and rest with a calm ability and strength to face the unexpected and difficult.

Without the intimate sense of belonging, life becomes an anguished experience of abandonment (rejection) and alienation in existence, and without the deep sense of security and sufficiency, a constant fear-filled worry and inability to face life's challenges and storms.

Through this a person is formed who, in an anguished performance, tries to find his identity, be who he should be and do what he should, but is unable to do so.

Jesus came to lift us out of the bottomless swamp of life's anxiety and bring us into the loving father-mother embrace of God where our deepest needs finally find their full satisfaction.

Are you bruised and languishing?

There is hope for you of complete healing and restoration in Him!